Archive for October 2013
Batter Up!…
Walt Whitman once said: “Baseball is our game — the American game: I connect it with our national character.” Still, as Foreign Policy observes…
As baseball has skyrocketed to popularity in other countries, particularly Japan and Latin American nations, the days of the United States claiming it exclusively are long over. The sport’s premier international tournament, the World Baseball Classic, featured 12 teams from across the globe this year, with the Dominican Republic coasting undefeated all the way to a championship. The tournament set ratings records in Japan, where it was the most-watched sporting event of the year and even out-performed the 2012 Olympics. In Taiwan, the WBC was the highest-rated cable program in the country’s history.
So, as one settles in for Game Three of this year’s Fall Classic– The Battle of the Beards— one might pause to consider Baseball’s place in the world…
A pick-up game in Havana, 2006
[More photos– from South Africa to Iraq to China– at FP]
Baseball has an estimated 500 million fans around the world… which ranks it seventh overall. To put that in context, the number one sport, football (or “soccer” as Americans are wont to call it), has 3.5 billion fans; the number two pastime, Cricket, 2.5 billion.
Plus– in this anniversary month of the first box score, a new site called Statlas, updates scoring, turning box scores into infographics.
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As we step up to the plate, we might recall that it was on this date in 1863, at The Freemasons’ Tavern on Great Queen Street in London, that the Football Association (or simply, the FA) was established; after centuries of football rules that varied from pitch to pitch, the FA established a single set of rules that has governed the game in England ever since. And given that it is the oldest such association in the world, its rules and procedures have shaped the game all over the world.
Me gotta go…
In 1963, a Portland high school band called the Kingsmen covered the song “Louie Louie,” originally recorded by Richard Berry eight years earlier. Their version has become a classic– though almost no one has any idea what the actual words are. (Hear it here.) As it happened, the band had a one-hour recording session in which to lay down both the A and B sides of their first record. To simulate a live performance, singer Jack Ely was forced to lean back and sing into a microphone suspended from the ceiling. “It was more yelling than singing,” Ely said, “’cause I was trying to be heard over all the instruments.” It didn’t help that he was wearing braces at the time of the performance, further aggravating his infamously slurred words. Still, the raw recording worked– it sold over 1 million copies, going gold.
It probably helped that Indiana Governor Matthew E. Welsh, assuming that obscurity meant obscenity, banned the song. Soon after, an angry parent wrote to then-U.S. Attorney General Robert F. Kennedy, insisting that the lyrics were dirty. Kennedy put FBI on the case; but the crime lab concluded, after four months of investigation, that the the recording could not be interpreted, that it was “unintelligible at any speed.” The lyrics are in fact innocent; but the FBI missed something: at about 0:53 into the song– audibly, but not obviously– Lynn Easton, the band’s drummer, drops a drumstick… and drops the f-bomb. (Hear it here.)
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As we mind our manners, we might recall that it was on this date in 1980 that AC/DC earned their first Top 40 hit with “You Shook Me All Night Long.” The maiden voyage of Brian Johnson (who’d replaced the band’s original lead singer Bon Scott after Scott’s untimely the prior year), it was the lead single on Back in Black, an album that has sold over 20 million copies.
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All the food that’s fit to eat…
Wired partnered with Food Network to crunch 49,733 recipes and 906,539 comments from their massive website. The result is a fascinating overview of how Americans cook… and eat. From food fads to celebrity chefs, from Thanksgiving dinner to regional cuisines, readers can whet their appetites at “Math Proves Bacon is a Miracle Food.”
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As we tuck in our napkins, we might recall that it was on this date in 1836 that Alonzo Dwight Phillips of Springfield, Massachusetts received the first U.S. patent (No. 68) for the phosphorous friction safety match. Though the first friction matches were made and sold in England in 1827, Phillips’ match– which could be safely stored/carried, then struck on any rough surface– was the first genuine friction match made in America. Known as “loco focos,” and later as “lucifers,” they were a key enabler of the spread of cigar smoking, of gas lighting, of gas cooking– and thus of the acceleration of interest in “finer” cooking that more-flexible gas stoves made possible– in the U.S. Indeed, by the outbreak of the Civil War fifteen years later, about a million matches a day were being manufactured.
Fright Night…
Halloween is about a week away– what’s a poor reader to wear?
Mark Rober and his company Digital Dudz offer a line of shirts and corresponding smartphone apps that create animated Halloween costumes…
This year, Mark is back with a new animation for his collection that displays a hand punching through your back and ripping your guts out. The gruesome animation is triggered by a smartphone’s internal motion sensor. When a friend pretends to punch his hand through your back and you arch your back, the gut ripping animation begins. [In the video below] Mark and his undead friend demonstrate how it works. The Digital Dudz apps (Apple and Android) and custom clothes are available to purchase online.
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Via the ever-informative Laughing Squid.
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As we don our gay apparel, we might send terrifying birthday greetings to John Michael Crichton; he was born on this date in 1942. An author, physician, producer, director, and screenwriter, he’s best known as a purveyor of techno-thrillers in the science fiction, medical fiction, and occasionally political thriller genres. The creator of The Andromeda Strain, Jurassic Park, Congo, Sphere, Rising Sun, Disclosure, The Lost World, Timeline, Prey, and State off Fear, among many others, his books have sold over 200 million copies worldwide, with many adapted into films. In 1994 Crichton became the only creative artist ever to have works simultaneously charting at No. 1 in television, film, and book sales (with ER, Jurassic Park, and Disclosure, respectively).
Let the games begin…
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If every state in the union had to choose an official sport, what would they pick? Football, football, lacrosse, football, skiing, football, football … and Alaska gets the one with sled dogs. But what if you had to assign one sport to each state, and could use each of those sports just once? How would you disperse our favorite pastimes among the 50 states and Washington, D.C.?
Now that’s a more interesting parlor game. Only 12 states have bothered to name any kind of “official sport,” which leaves a lot of room to impose one’s sporting will on the American people…
And that’s exactly what Josh Levin, executive editor at Slate, has done. Read the rules he followed and explore the results in detail at “The United Sports of America- If each state could have only one sport, what would it be?”
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As we oil our wheels, we might recall that it was on this date in 1845 that the first known baseball box score appeared in the New York Morning News, a month after the first set of rules were written by Alexander Cartwright and some his fellow Knickerbockers.
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